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Topic: PhotoDune by Envato (Read 16108 times)

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helix7

« on: July 14, 2011, 13:28 »

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Could be old news but I haven't seen anything around the forums about this one. Envato has a stock photo marketplace in the beta stage, and it looks like some popular microstock artists have been invited to participate. Yuri is on there along with Lev, CandyBox, elenathewise, even our msg moderator leaf.

Anyone been selling there? Any signs of life for this new site?

I've been on Envato's vector/graphics marketplace GraphicRiver for a while now and get decent results. The tough thing about GR is the 25% commission on prices that are generally lower than most microstock sites. The nice thing about all of the Envato marketplaces, though, is that they offer image exclusivity for 50-70% (depending on your sales level). The Envato marketplaces are a bit different than typical microstock agencies, so this could be useful. I'm actually thinking about getting into website theme development, and I can sell exclusively through ThemeForest for a higher commission while staying non-exclusive with my GraphicRiver stuff.

I am pretty excited about that site actually. I really like their philosophy and their management seem very level headed and on the ball. Not to mention their site design is one of the best, imo. Sales are what talks though, so I guess we'll have to wait and see how they do in that department.

I have been putting off giving them an intro until they were live and ready to go but obviously the 'world' can find them so they must be getting close. edit:.. I was looking at the logged in site. I just logged out and see they are still 'private'

I am pretty excited about that site actually. I really like their philosophy and their management seem very level headed and on the ball. Not to mention their site design is one of the best, imo. Sales are what talks though, so I guess we'll have to wait and see how they do in that department.

I have been putting off giving them an intro until they were live and ready to go but obviously the 'world' can find them so they must be getting close.

you got me excited too as I read your comment, too bad we cannot see the "inside" of it but I believe there are nice royalties % or your speech would be different right?

I am pretty excited about that site actually. I really like their philosophy and their management seem very level headed and on the ball. Not to mention their site design is one of the best, imo. Sales are what talks though, so I guess we'll have to wait and see how they do in that department.

I have been putting off giving them an intro until they were live and ready to go but obviously the 'world' can find them so they must be getting close.

you got me excited too as I read your comment, too bad we cannot see the "inside" of it but I believe there are nice royalties % or your speech would be different right?

Sorry, yeah, I just logged out and see that it is indeed still 'private' - I was looking at the logged in site :S I believe they are planning on opening it up to photographers before too too long though, so you shouldn't have to wait long.

I am a contributor on AudioJungle and investigated VideoHive (both part of the Envato group) and I can also log into the PhotoDune site. However, if PhotoDune is anything like AudioJungle and VideoHive I will not get exited too soon.

Submission on those two sites are very laborious and very primitive compared to the competition. On AudioJungle it is required to submit both a WAV and MP3 file (other sites will automatically create a MP3 version from the WAV), and I must also submit a lower quality MP3 version with the AudioJungle watermarked on (other sites will automatically create a watermarked preview file). Similarly on VideoHive you must submit a thumbnail jpg image, the HD video clip and a lower resolution, watermarked version for preview. For all this trouble they sell your HD videos for an average of $5 and pay non-exclusive 25% commission. Same with AudioJungle - high rejection rates, ridiculously low prices and low commission.

No thank you. Unless they can radically deviate from this rip-off approach of their other sites I will give PhotoDune a miss.

25% is a bit of a yawn, especially for a new site (even if some of their other sites are big)(and especially if they do the rip off the contributors on credits - this is an if as I dont know I'm not a member at any of their sites)

25% is a bit of a yawn, especially for a new site (even if some of their other sites are big)(and especially if they do the rip off the contributors on credits - this is an if as I dont know I'm not a member at any of their sites)

the point there seem to be the exclusivity which starts at 50%.. if there are buyers it does look good but still hard to change and drop all the other agencies they hold up you income but it does look a nice start..

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helix7

Definitely. The people who seem to be most active and profitable on Envato marketplaces are exclusives, and they often are exclusives who sell things that fall outside the typical microstock product categories so there is a greater incentive to offer those products exclusively. Envato is often the only worthwhile place to sell things like PSDs, website templates, etc.

For photographers and vector artists it's far less likely that people will sell files exclusively at PhotoDune or GraphicRiver, as those types of products are best distributed elsewhere.

I'd be surprised to see many people selling exclusive photos through PhotoDune.

I guess they should open a place for "exclusive photos/illustrations/footage", if buyers start getting there might be good in the future and we could work more and more to "them", this is all hard to predict but better thinking of this than the current agencies attitude..

Hey guys! Great to hear you've been taking a look at PhotoDune and our other marketplaces.

As Eco points out we have much we need to improve both for PhotoDune and our other marketplaces. One of the downsides of operating a large suite of sites is that there are lots and lots of things to do But we're getting there. Actually PhotoDune has been good in that sense as it has been pushing us to improve some of the functionality on the other sites too! In particular we are working on a bulk upload tool to make it all go a lot faster.

Seeing just how much quantity there is in the photo arena is pretty mind boggling! Prior to starting a photo marketplace we had 70,000 items in total over 8 marketplaces. So you can imagine the numbers of photos has sorta bowled us over. But we're getting there. :-)

Oh and I forgot to mention, that we should be going live in a few weeks. We're still polishing off various bits of the site!

So far the beta has been going well and building up slowly but surely. We had a couple hundred sales in the first week, 300 in the second, 400 last week, hopefully keeps going that way :-) Still small potatoes in the scheme of things of course

I'll be sure to check back here regularly if anyone has any more feedback about the site, or about anything else you think we should be doing!

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Microbius

« Reply #15 on: July 19, 2011, 04:44 »

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Personally I think that the other stock image offerings from Envato are possibly the worst on the market for contributors. They pay the some of the lowest commissions (perhaps the lowest) both in terms of the actual price to the customer and percentage to contributor.They also have very stringent quality control and an antiquated upload system. So in other words they want only the best and pay the very worst for it.It may look very nice and designer friendly, but really the terms these guys offer are perhaps the most disrespectful out there.

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helix7

Hey guys! Great to hear you've been taking a look at PhotoDune and our other marketplaces...

Collis, I made a comment in the initial post here about exclusivity at Envato marketplaces and how you can sell images exclusively with Envato while selling other images elsewhere. I'm just realizing that I may be a little off on that point, though. Can you elaborate on exclusivity at Envato and how it works? Specifically, how it works across the marketplaces? If I wanted to sell themes exclusively with ThemeForest, can I still sell graphics non-exclusively through GraphicRiver? Or does all of the stuff I sell through Envato need to be exclusively sold on the marketplaces in order to qualify for the exclusive royalty rate?

Just wondering how this works, in various situations. I can imagine some PhotoDune photographers also selling graphics, and vice versa, and maybe wanting to only sell graphics exclusively.

I try to sell vectors there (graphic river) and the accept ratio is very low!! They reject all my vectors. Vectors that are in all microstock sites (istock included, imo the best vector site). All that trouble for 25% of 3 or 5$. No thanks.

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Microbius

« Reply #18 on: July 19, 2011, 10:04 »

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You also have to remember that they are also another site that want you to pack half your portfolio into a single download so not only are they paying less per download, each download has a lot more work going into it.Take a look at the size of some of the icon sets or sets of characters/mascots for example.

Collis, I made a comment in the initial post here about exclusivity at Envato marketplaces and how you can sell images exclusively with Envato while selling other images elsewhere. I'm just realizing that I may be a little off on that point, though. Can you elaborate on exclusivity at Envato and how it works? Specifically, how it works across the marketplaces? If I wanted to sell themes exclusively with ThemeForest, can I still sell graphics non-exclusively through GraphicRiver? Or does all of the stuff I sell through Envato need to be exclusively sold on the marketplaces in order to qualify for the exclusive royalty rate?

Just wondering how this works, in various situations. I can imagine some PhotoDune photographers also selling graphics, and vice versa, and maybe wanting to only sell graphics exclusively.

Good question. When you have an exclusive account you can sell other things elsewhere, but not the same things. So any item you sell has to be exclusive.

At the moment we've been allowing people to create two accounts, so they can sell one portfolio of things non-exclusively and another exclusively. A good example is this amazing audio author:

It's not ideal however and I'd really like to fix that so you don't need to make a second account, as it makes it hard to change an item's exclusivity. So one day in the future I hope we can amend that.

Let me know if that makes sense, or if you have any more questions!!

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I try to sell vectors there (graphic river) and the accept ratio is very low!! They reject all my vectors. Vectors that are in all microstock sites (istock included, imo the best vector site). All that trouble for 25% of 3 or 5$. No thanks.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm currently reviewing our GraphicRiver Vector standards, I think maybe we've made them a bit high to be honest. It's a bit of a big job to review the reviewing standards however, so will take a while. As for the non-exclusive commission, we have always really pushed hard towards exclusivity (where we have much better rates), but I appreciate the feedback, as we're always looking to improve in all areas.

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Personally I think that the other stock image offerings from Envato are possibly the worst on the market for contributors. They pay the some of the lowest commissions (perhaps the lowest) both in terms of the actual price to the customer and percentage to contributor.They also have very stringent quality control and an antiquated upload system. So in other words they want only the best and pay the very worst for it.It may look very nice and designer friendly, but really the terms these guys offer are perhaps the most disrespectful out there.

You also have to remember that they are also another site that want you to pack half your portfolio into a single download so not only are they paying less per download, each download has a lot more work going into it.Take a look at the size of some of the icon sets or sets of characters/mascots for example.

Oh, I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, our mission at Envato is to make a *good* offering for contributors, so it's not good that you feel the direct opposite. We are working on our upload system, and I'm not sure I agree about our rates - at least with respect to exclusive rates. As I mentioned above we are very geared towards exclusivity, some of our marketplaces are in the high 90%'s of exclusivity.

We certainly don't intend to be disrespectful to contributors in any way, shape or form, so I'm very sorry that you've felt that way. I will spend some time considering your feedback in more detail to see if there are other ways we can improve.

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Microbius

« Reply #20 on: July 20, 2011, 03:17 »

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Thanks Collis. Just being honest about my experience with the site. It's good that you seem to be so willing to listen. A criticism I heard from a fellow illustrator was that the community is very tight knit and inward looking. This is obviously a positive in many ways, but perhaps has meant less time has been spent looking at how Graphicriver (for example) sits in the wider stock illustration market place.

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Noodles

« Reply #21 on: July 20, 2011, 04:29 »

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I buy Envato After Effect themes often. For each theme there is a message board to ask questions and leave comments which is very useful. Overall, good quality and no complaints.

Collis it is nice to see that you guys have a much better attitude than other sites around.

Actually it was one of the reasons I joined graphicriver eventhough I didn't like the non-exclusive commission and vector pricing..

Congrats on photodune. It should soon be up there in middle tier agencies on this site.. The good thing is photodune is closer to industry standards than graphicriver for vectors is..

At least you don't ask yuri and other guys to package half of their portfolios into one zip folder and price it for $6

My point is a vector is as special as a photograph if not more and I willl never understand how you guys can price a photo for $9 while you can't do the same for vectors.. Graphicriver will be much more profitable for everyone if you follow the industry standards for vectors as well..

I have more than 600 vectors on most sites, while on graphicriver I have only 125.. This is not only because of rejections but also because I didn't even attemt to upload like 300 vectors! uploading to graphicriver means going out of my routine and spending a lot more time preparing files for you than all other sites combined..

Because 1 standard preview file is not enough for graphicriver and we have to prepare a preview and a thumbnail seperately.. Add to that, you ask us to package some icon sets into 1 single set just to price them at $6 - $7 How can I remotely consider doing that while every single piece alone sell for more than $6 - $7 on other sites? If you packaged them for something like $99 maybe it could be done.. I think the packaging thing is wrong all along.. Vectors are not basic photoshop styles that everyone can do.. They deserve more respect.. They deserve a graphicriver which is close to the standards as photodune is to photo standards..

this is only what I found in 1 page.. My casino images are not more similar to each other than any of these photos.. Don't get me wrong I like Yuri as a photographer.. This is the case for every single photographer in the industry.. I just took Yuri as an example as he is more prominent than others.. So you guys make the similar image rule work on vectors but not on photos..

Collis, I don't mean to be harsh or anything I just think you are a really nice guy who understand criticism and positive feedback, otherwise if it was anybody else, or any other agency but graphicriver, I wouldn't even bother writing this because it wouldn't be worth it..

I am critisizing you guys because I do think you have the potential to be the best vector site if you did a few things right!

Snip The good thing is photodune is closer to industry standards than graphicriver for vectors is..

Sorry, but I have to react to that. 25% non-exclusive commission is not close to industry standards. Just because some big players in the industry get away with insulting low rates, it doesn't mean they are setting a standard.